


How Small We All Seem

by MeatballSander



Series: Welcome to Gallow's Creek [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Original Character Death(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, Supernatural Elements, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25309393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeatballSander/pseuds/MeatballSander
Summary: A one shot about a girl named Lyra, who's not from Gallow's Creek, and how she got there. This got way darker than I intended!
Series: Welcome to Gallow's Creek [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650853





	How Small We All Seem

**Author's Note:**

> tw// drug mention, minor character death
> 
> This is an unadulterated first draft; apologies for any spelling/grammatical errors

You're walking in a forest. What does the forest look like to you? What kind of trees are there? What kind of weather is it? What time of day is it?

Lyra always found those kinds of tests funny: those little magazine articles that would ask you to come up with something in order to tell you something about your personality you probably already knew. For a thing like her, she didn't have to try to illustrate that forest in her mind - her imagination stretched further than the confines of her brain, blooming into the world around her for whoever she wanted to see it. 

It wasn't a metaphor. She could do it. She was a peculiar creature known as a paramn, a monster that appeared human yet could fool a person's senses better than any hypnotist. She was a master of hallucinations, furthermore could form anything from her mind's eye for those of others - whether it be a small object she wanted to show one person, or a whole realm, full of new senses and concepts for thousands to experience. It was debated what accounts of mass hysteria or occurrences of the Mandela effect were due to the work of a paramn.

Despite it all, the world Lyra was walking in was very real. It was dangerous to walk on the highway (as if the fact had to be stated) but the depths of the deep forest on either side were not inviting. This forest was dark, a grey green reminiscent of a faded dress. The trees were pine, the smell fresh while simultaneously almost overpowering. They were blanketed in a thick fog, a shroud that snakes between every trunk and every needle like countless tiny arms. And as for the time of day... It was anyone's guess at that point. Early morning?

Although she had to keep aware of her surroundings if she didn't wish to get struck down by a car, Lyra's thoughts kept going back to the previous night, no matter how she tried not to think about it.

To say her mother didn't care for her wouldn't be a lie, but it wouldn't be entirely the truth either. Her mother cared for a very certain part of her: her blood. One of the perks of being a rare race meant that there were countless people out there who cared for your well-being; people who were desperate you stayed alive. The downside is that they didn't care how. 

An interesting trait of a thing like Lyra is that her blood wasn't just blood - it was a powerful drug. A hallucinogen, with effects not unlike LSD. Her mother bled her daily: those vials upon vials would be sold to the highest bidder. The food she ate (or more accurately, the mush she forced down) was nutritious but tasteless, and she sometimes wondered if gelatin leaves would have a more pleasant flavour. Two hours after feeding she was bled and then locked in her room, the lethargy sweeping over her too strong for her to even think about how to break down the door.

She had such vivid, beautiful powers, but was always kept too weak to ever get the chance to really develop them. Her mother had no qualms in telling her about her race, her powers, or what her blood was used for (her race was something she apparently inherited from her father), for she never feared her. After all, she was just her feeble baby girl. 

The few and far between times Lyra felt at all energetic were more spent reading the books on the shelves that lined her room as opposed to evolving her abilities: what kind of reality could she make if she hadn't even learned the basics of what lied outside her bedroom walls? She spent hours scouring through tabloid magazines and leather bound epics alike, drawn in by even the smallest details.

This sentiment was shared by the one other person she spoke to. On those nights of a blue moon, when despite it all her mother had failed to properly lock the door, Lyra slipped out into the rest of the house. It was a modest thing on the edge of a woodland, although she never saw it from the outside: there never came a time when both her bedroom door and any exterior exit were both open. But something that was always open was the basement. 

A face smiled at her from the bottom of the stairs leading down into that dark, dank pocket of concrete under the house. It scared her at first, but intrigued her more. Her little feet pattered ever so slowly down those creaky boards, lest she tumbled face first down them, curiosity guiding her better than any light could. And the thing at the bottom... The face belonged to a long, winding neck; to a translucent winged body, glittering even in the absence of light; to the arms of mantis; to the tail of a scorpion. 

"Are you a chimera?" She remembered asking it.

"That's an awfully big word for a girl so small." She remembered it responding to her. "But alas, I am not."

"Then what are you?"

"What are you?"

"I'm Lyra." She did a little curtsy in her old nightgown. "I'm a paramn."

"Well, well. I'm Emmy." The neck craned, a movement almost like a nod. "I'm an aberration."

"An aberra..." She tried to learn the word, but found herself frustrated.

"Aberration." Emmy spoke with a smile on its voice - she wondered if it _could_ smile. Where was its mouth? It was too dark to see one.

"What does that mean?"

"What does paramn mean?"

And with that, Lyra was stumped. But it was the start of a tradition: if Lyra ever found her bedroom door unlocked, no matter how exhausted she was, she would force her way down into the basement to talk to the gargantuan creature - aberration - that lived there. It was from Emmy she learned that paramn was rooted from the word paramnesia, a phenomenon involving distorted memories or fantasies. It was from them she learned an aberration was abnormal; a creature that could not be categorised; a thing with no discernible root or history. The two of them would chat for hours and hours, and if Lyra ever fell asleep during it she always found herself tucked tightly in bed, evidently not by her mother. For years this went on, Emmy Lyra's dearest and only friend.

*

"Are you awake? Open your eyes, child." Emmy roused Lyra from her sleep with a persistent hiss. Unlike all previous times it was its turn to visit her, the aberration taking up at least half of the room's volume. It was cramped and anxious, and the feelings extended to Lyra.

"What's the matter?" She sat up, trying to suppress her surprise. The lamp in her room had been turned on, presumably by Emmy, and its beams of light were casting shadows across its grotesque form. She could now see the milky white of its body; the deep purples and oranges of its glittering wings and eyes; the frightening stinger on the end of its tail. And yet, despite it all... She wasn't scared of it.

"I've heard whispers from the walls of this house." Emmy warned. "Your mother is going to sell you tonight - to someone who thinks they can better profit off you."

"I don't understand..."

"You're a very special girl, Lyra. You're a very smart girl. You don't deserve a life governed by people like them." Emmy moved its rounded face closer to Lyra, and she placed a hand on what she presumed was its cheek. "When that door opens, when they take their first step in, I want you to run. The front door will be open - I want you to run out of it and don't stop. Don't stop until you arrive somewhere new. Somewhere safe. I won't let them follow you."

"Why does mother want to sell me? What are they going to do to me?" Lyra felt panic rising in her voice, peaking as she heard heavy footsteps outside the door.

"They're not going to do anything to you. I promise you that."

"Will you follow me? Will I ever see you again?" The lock was being turned.

"I won't immediately. But know this is no goodbye."

The door opened, her mother and another man stepped in, and the world seemed to freeze.

Somehow neither of them noticed - or at the very least, at all cared about - the ginormous, nightmarish creature occupying the room, as if it were a spectacle only to be seen by Lyra's eyes. But that didn't stop its stinger plunging itself deep into the man's chest; Lyra's mother letting out a bloodcurdling scream in response.

At that point Lyra stopped paying attention. She jumped off the bed, slipped across something slick on the hardwood floor, and ran down the stairs. On the way out of the room she felt something spray against her back but she didn't care. She just kept running. She found the front door, opened it up, and entered the world she had been denied all her life.

She didn't know how many hours had passed, but she no longer had the strength to run. Her feet trudged along the battered concrete of the highway overpass, her legs sore but soothed against the cold, humid air. Her hair was a platinum blonde that wafted around her like a spectre, her eyes wide and shimmering in the mist's diffuse light. How old was her hair? How many minutes and seconds of the same content had her eyes taken in? She was twelve by now, she knew that much. Her birthday was in late February; this day fell in mid April. How was it that in just one night she had seen more than she had even imagined in all her 146 months? What did this world hold? What did it hold for her specifically?

Two statues came from the mist, their figures growing clearer as she walked closer to them. They were tremendous, standing like monoliths sent from gods on either side of the highway - one jade like copper, one brass like bronze. They were of humanoid form and so, so tall, that everything above midchest was high above the world, far out of view. No matter how far Lyra craned her neck they kept going, extending into the heavens like the tower of Babel. Oh, how small she seemed before them.

Lyra tripped, skinning her knees as her glistening red eyes were glued to the grey sky. Her head slowly dropping, she saw an arch between the two of them. It had writing on it.

"WELCOME TO GALLOW'S CREEK"

The gallows were a place where people were hanged. A creek was like a small river. By use of the apostrophe, should one assume the creek belonged to the gallow? But the gallows are a place themselves; it can't really own anything. Perhaps it was a creek that ran through the gallows. What a weird place name.

Lyra got to her feet, ignoring her pain. She felt no lethargy, no apprehension. She just kept walking, determined to reach the end of the road and the start of the place before her. Emmy told her not to stop until she found somewhere new. She figured this counted. 


End file.
